Finding a new meaning: “I’m sorry for your loss”

Losing something you love can be excruciating, but losing someone you love can be downright unbearable.  I was fortunate enough to never experience that kind of pain as a child.  To never feel the bottoming out of your stomach that comes when you lose someone unexpectedly.

Losing my great grandparents all in their late 90s seemed like an expected passage and their long lives were celebrated rather than mourned.  I was well into my 20s before I lost a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or friend, and I fortunately still haven’t experienced the loss of a parent, sibling, child or spouse.  I remember seeing the heart-wrenching pain on people’s faces when I attended funerals when I was younger for friends who lost their parents or siblings.  I did my best to understand and sympathize, but that kind of agony is incomprehensible if you haven’t lived through it.

54 Reasons Why I Will Unabashedly Continue Calling My Pets My Children Until I Have Human Babies (and probably even after)

I am obsessed with animals.  Obsessed.  I always have been.  When I was in kindergarten, I had a folder full of pictures of cute animals that I would cut out of magazines.  The 5 year old boy in class who liked me used to give me puppy pictures as a way of winning my heart.  When asked to do an assignment in grade school about someone that we looked up to and wanted to be like, I chose Fern Arable from Charlotte’s Web, because I wanted to be able to talk to animals.  Several of my pets growing up were the result of me begging for them, crying in pet stores, or just bringing them home without permission.  I used to donate almost all of my allowance and paper route money to animal rights groups, refused to kill spiders and instead caught them and put them safely outside, had a room full of stuffed animals and books about animals, and couldn’t see through my bedroom window because it was entirely covered in the stickers that were sent to me by the animal rights groups that I donated all my money to.  My love for animals is what caused me to go vegetarian when I was younger, and eventually turn vegan as an adult (although those decisions have since been solidified by many health, economical and environmental reasons).  When I was 20 and working with the civil engineering department of the City of Rochester one summer (random job, long story), I was supervising some work being done on the Erie Canal Trail.  I completely shut down operation for a couple minutes while I moved several snails to safety and while 5 construction workers sat back and had a good laugh.